What Thin Partitions

by Mark Clifton

  Then it happened. There was a gasp, a smothered scream. And over at one side of the auditorium a dark object began bobbing about in the air up near the ceiling. It swerved and swooped. The Swami's luminescent sphere jerked to a sudden stop. The Swami sat with open mouth and stared at the dark object which he was not controlling.

  The dark object was not confined to any dull black wire. It went where it willed. It went too high and brushed against the ceiling.

  There was a sudden shower of coins to the floor. A compact hit the floor with a flat spat. A handkerchief floated down more slowly.

  "My purse!” a woman gasped. I recognized my interviewer's voice. Her purse contained two Auerbach cylinders, and they were having themselves a ball.

  In alarm, I looked quickly at the stage, hoping the Swami wasn't astute enough to catch on. But he was gone. The audience, watching the bobbing purse, hadn't realized it as yet. And they were delayed in realizing it by a diversion from the other side of the auditorium.

  ” I can't hold it down any longer, Mr. Kennedy!” a woman gasped out. “It's taking me up into the air!"

  "Hold on, Annie!” I shouted back. “I'm coming!"

  * * * *

  A chastened and subdued Swami sat in my office the following morning, and this time he was inclined to be cooperative. More, he was looking to me for guidance, understanding, and didn't mind acknowledging my ascendancy. And, with the lieutenant left in the outer office, he didn't have any face to preserve.

  Later, last night, he'd learned the truth of what happened after he had run away in a panic. I'd left a call at the hotel for the lieutenant. When the lieutenant had got him calmed down and returned my call, I'd instructed him to tell the Swami about the Auerbach cylinders; to tell the Swami he was not a fake after all.

  The Swami had obviously spent a sleepless night. It is a terrible thing to have spent years perfecting the art of fakery, and then to realize you needn't have faked at all. More terrible, he had swallowed some of his own medicine, and all through the night he had shivered in fear of some instant and horrible retaliation. For him it was still a case of There Are Mysteries.

  And it was of no comfort to his state of mind right now that the four cylinders we had finally captured last night were, at this moment, bobbing about in my office, swooping and swerving around in the upper part of the room, like bats trying to find some opening. I was giving him the full treatment. The first two cylinders, down on the floor, were pressing up against my closed door, like frightened little things trying to escape a room of horror.

  The Swami's face was twitching, and his long fingers kept twining themselves into King's X symbols. But he was sitting it out. He was swallowing some of the hair of the dog that bit him. I had to give him A for that.

  "I've been trying to build up a concept of the framework wherein psi seems to function,” I told him casually, just as if it were all a formulized laboratory procedure, “I had to pull last night's stunt to prove something."

  He tore his eyes away from the cylinders which were over exploring one corner of the ceiling, and looked at me.

  "Let's go to electricity,” I said speculatively. “Not that we know psi and electricity have anything in common, other than some similar analogies, but we don't know they don't. Both of them may be just different manifestations of the same thing. We don't really know why a magnetized core, turning inside a coil of copper wire, generates electricity.

  "Oh we've got some phrases,” I acknowledged. “We've got a whole structure of phrases, and when you listen to them they sound as if they ought to mean something-like the phrases you were using last night. Everybody assumes they do mean something to the pundits. So, since it is human to want to be a pundit, we repeat these phrases over and over, and call them explanations. Yet we do know what happens, even if we do just theorize about why. We know how to wrap something around something and get electricity.

  "Take the induction coil,” I said. “We feed a low-voltage current into one end, and we draw off a high-voltage current from the other. But anyone who wants, any time, can disprove the whole principle of the induction coil. All you have to do is wrap your core with a nonconductor, say nylon thread, and presto, nothing comes out. You see, it doesn't work; and anybody who claims it does is a faker and a liar. That's what happens when science tries to investigate psi by the standard methods.

  "You surround a psi-gifted individual with nonbelievers, and probably nothing will come out of it. Surround him with true believers; and it all seems to act like an induction coil. Things happen. Yet even when things do happen, it is usually impossible to prove it.

  "Take yourself, Swami. And this is significant. First we have the north point effect. Then those two little beggars trying to get out the door. Then the ones which are bobbing around up there. Without the cylinders there would have been no way to know that anything had happened at all.

  "Now, about this psi framework. It isn't something you can turn on and off, at will. We don't know enough yet for that. Aside from some believers and those individuals who do seem to attract psi forces, we don't know, yet, what to wrap around what. So, here's what you're to do: You're to keep a supply of these cylinders near you at all times. If any psi effects happen, they'll record it. Fair enough?

  "Now,” I said with finality. “I have anticipated that you might refuse. But you're not the only person who has psi ability. I've wired General Sanfordwaithe to send me another fellow; one who will cooperate."

  The Swami thought it over. Here he was with a suite in a good hotel; with an army lieutenant to look after his earthly needs; on the payroll of a respectable company; with a ready-made flock of believers; and no fear of the bunco squad. He had never had it so good. The side money, for private readings alone, should be substantial.

  Further, and he watched me narrowly, I didn't seem to be afraid of the cylinders.

  "I'll cooperate,” he said.

  For three days there was nothing. The Swami called me a couple times a day and reported that the cylinders just lay around his room. I didn't know what to tell him. I recommended he read biographies of famous mediums. I recommended fasting, and breathing, and contemplating self. He seemed dubious, but said he'd try it.

  On the morning of the third day, Sara called me on the intercom and told me there was another Army lieutenant in her office, and another ... gentleman. I opened my door and went out to Sara's office to greet them.

  The new lieutenant was no more than the standard output from the same production line as Lieutenant Murphy, but the wizened little old man he had in tow was from a different and much rarer matrix. As fast as I had moved, I was none too soon. The character reached over and tilted up Sara's chin as I was coming through the door.

  "Now you're a healthy young wench,” he said with a leer. “What are you doing tonight, baby?” The guy was at least eighty years old.

  "Hey, you, pop!” I exclaimed in anger. “Be your age!"

  He turned around and looked me up and down.

  "I'm younger, that way, than you are, right now!” he snapped.

  A disturbance in the outer office kept me from thinking up a retort. There were some subdued screams, some scuffling of heavy shoes, the sounds of some running feet as applicants got away. The outer door to Sara's office was flung open.

  Framed in the doorway, breast high, floated the Swami!

  He was sitting, cross-legged, on a hotel bathmat. From both front corners, where they had been attached by loops of twine, there peeked Auerbach cylinders. Two more rear cylinders were grasped in Lieutenant Murphy's strong hands. He was propelling the Swami along, mid air, in Atlantic City Boardwalk style.

  The Swami looked down at us with aloof disdain, then his eyes focused on the old man. His glance wavered; he threw a startled and fearful look at the cylinders holding up his bathmat. They did not fall. A vast relief overspread his face, and he drew himself erect with more disdain than ever. The old man was not so aloof.

  "Harry Glotz!” he exclaime
d. “Why you ... you faker! What are you doing in that getup?"

  The Swami took a casual turn about the room, leaning to one side on his magic carpet as if banking an airplane.

  "Peasant!” He spat the word out and motioned grandly toward the door. Lieutenant Murphy pushed him through.

  "Why, that no good bum!” the old man shouted at me. “That no-good from nowhere! I'll fix him! Thinks he's something, does he? I'll show him! Anything he can do I can do better!"

  His rage got the better of him. He rushed through the door, shaking both fists above his white head, shouting imprecations, threats, and pleading to be shown how the trick was done, all in the same breath. The new lieutenant cast a stricken look at us and then sped after his charge.

  "Looks as if we're finally in production,” I said to Sara.

  "That's only the second one,” she said mournfully. “When you get all six of them, this joint's sure going to be jumping!"

  I looked out of her window at the steel and concrete walls of the factory. They were solid, real, secure; they were a symbol of reality, the old reality a man could understand.

  "I hope you don't mean that literally, Sara,” I answered dubiously.

  PART THREE

  HOW ALLIED

  Occasionally, in every personnel man's life, there comes a day when there are no pressing problems. Perhaps out of sheer boredom with perpetual squabbling, all the workers and department heads at Computer Research were giving their attention to getting some work done for a change. Even Old Stone Face-Mr. Henry Grenoble, General Manager-hadn't bothered me for a day or so about how much less dependable people were than machines, and why wasn't I doing something about that? The lull gave me a breather.

  I was sitting at my desk, experimenting with my little psi machine, when Sara, my secretary, stuck her head through our adjoining door. She looked my little gadget over, looked at me, and stepped all the way into my office.

  "Your retrogression to childhood seems to be progressing nicely, Mr. Kennedy,” she said in that dry, flip manner she affects, or really feels, with me.

  "This is a psi machine,” I instructed loftily. “Good for testing psi force. Works better for some than for others. Follows Rhine's card-calling patterns, works better for the first few tries than later in the run-sometimes. Sometimes the other way around, just to keep us confused."

  She grinned at me and tossed her shoulder-length bob of red hair in the latest movie queen gesture. But no matter how hard she tried, her face could not assume that expression of vacuous idiocy men are supposed to find irresistible.

  "Maybe we could find out how strong your psi force is, Sara,” I suggested. “Want to try?"

  "I'll stick to tea leaves,” she answered. “Or maybe take a course of lessons from that fake Swami you hired last month."

  "That fake Swami is doing all right,” I answered her back. “Or as well as might be expected. Now and then he does activate some Auerbach psi cylinders."

  "Just so we don't all go overboard,” she murmured, and looked pointedly at my gadget. In spite of her overtones of disdain, I knew she was interested.

  "Sometime, in the deep privacy of your apartment, where you don't have to maintain your sophisticated dignity, you might like to try this little gadget,” I said seriously. “Take a piece of cardboard, draw a clock face on it, stick a pin up through the center. Cut a small arrow out of ordinary paper and balance it, without piercing, on the pin point. Think of a number on the card, and if your psi force is anything to brag about the arrow will swing around and point to that number. It's very simple, anybody can make one."

  "Of course the air currents in the room have nothing whatever to do with swinging the arrow around,” she scoffed. Still, she did come closer and perch herself on the arm of the crying chair-the chair that looks comfortable but actually slants a little so the sitter slowly slides outward, a gentle hint that even the most enjoyable grievance or calculated hysterics must come to an end sometime.

  "Sure,” I agreed. “The point is the arrow goes to the right number too often for random chance."

  Sara surprised me, and shouldn't have because I knew she was a bright girl.

  "You sit there thinking at that little thing,” she said, and gazed out of my window at the long cement wall of factory building number three. “Air currents move it around. It hesitates at the wrong number, so you go on concentrating. Finally it gets around to the right number and wham! You score a hit. How can you lose""

  "You want to go out and find a nice soft tree crotch to sleep in because investigating the idea of a cave is too radical?” I asked sourly.

  I shoved the little gadget over to one side of my desk beside another one that had, instead of numbers, the brief answers to questions written on it. Such as “Yes,” “No,” “Tomorrow,” things like that. In a fit of whimsy I'd filled in one space with “Don't do it, Ralph!"

  "What did you want, Sara?” I asked with one more glance at the psi machines. “You didn't come in here just to browbeat me."

  "There's an applicant by the name of George to see you,” she answered.

  "George? George Who?” I asked, automatically.

  "Just George,” she shrugged. “That's all the interviewer told me.

  "What's the matter with the interviewers? Why can't they talk to this George? Why should I have to take my attention away from important things-"

  Her eyes swiveled over to my psi gadgets, and she couldn't help grinning.

  "All right,” I agreed. “Maybe not so important, but how are we to know? Anyway, why should I interview raw applicants when we've got a whole staff for that purpose?"

  "This George seems to be something special, and you gave orders that you, personally, wanted to see anybody with-anybody like that. Who knows? Maybe you'll turn up another fake Swami, or another little poltergeist girl like Jennie Malasek."

  I looked at her, grimaced wryly, and sighed.

  "Not again,” I said. “That was when the heat was on from the Military. They've cooled down now, and so have I. I've had my fill of screwballs. I—” I sighed again at her patient certainty I'd see the applicant as soon as I'd grumbled enough. “All right,” I agreed. “Send him in. If the interviewers can't handle him, well, I'd better do something to keep from asking myself on the way home, ‘And what bright hope did you give to the World today, Ralph Kennedy?’ Send him in."

  "Yes, sir,” she said formally, and stood up. She still says “sir” to me now and then. I'm never sure if it is respect, derision, or just an old habit hanging on from young and hopeful days when she dreamed of being secretary to a dynamic tycoon of industry. Was it ever possible she might have thought the Director of Industrial Relations at Computer Research Corporation was a dynamic tycoon? If so, I may have let her down.

  While she was out of the office I started to ditch my psi machines into a desk drawer, then decided to let them stay. After all, it was only an applicant I'd be interviewing.

  "Is George going to be something special-more trouble?” I asked the answer machine. The arrow pointed to “Yes.” This was not so remarkable, since the arrow had been pointing there before I'd asked. I could have made precognition out of that if I wanted to.

  I lit a cigarette.

  My door opened again to gust the number arrow off its moorings and send the answer arrow swirling around. Five young men came in, single file, through the doorway. Behind them Sara was making signs with her eyes and shoulders that she hadn't known it was to be a convention. She made wide eyes, and closed the door.

  At first glance they were easily classified as fresh, young college grads. A couple were big and bulky, a couple were medium and one was a wiry little guy. They were assorted blondes, brunettes and betweens. Each had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and assorted ears. They didn't exactly have the trademark “Made At Stanford” stamped on their foreheads, but it was pretty apparent they'd all been turned out by the same mass production education machine.

  I waved to conference chairs grouped t
ogether over in one corner of the office.

  "Have seats, fellows,” I said.

  They all sat down, as close to one another as the chairs permitted, as if to draw reassurance and warmth from one another. Their movement was just enough off beat not to be the precision of a drill team. I sighed silently: Young grads always made such a big thing out of a Job Interview. I hoped I wouldn't be a disappointment to them.

  "Before we begin,” I said, and put a little of the classroom lecture tone in my voice to make them feel at ease, “I should check you fellows out on something. It's a bad idea to go job hunting in a gang, or even in pairs. When you become adult you're supposed to be able to walk into an office all by yourself, without your gang to hold you up. All right, which one of you is looking for work? Which one is ... er ... George?"

  They looked at one another with something like a secret smile, then they looked at me. And there was pity for me in their faces. That was normal enough. The young grad naturally assumes that no one, before his time, ever cracked a textbook, or even learned how to read. And at that time I was still secure enough in my mature ascendancy not to realize I might need their pity.

  "Sir,” Chair Number One said boldly. Then his immaturity got the best of him. He gulped and swallowed. But the sentence wasn't interrupted, because Chair Number Two picked it up without a pause.

  "Word has got around that this company hires oddballs!” He used the term with a certain pride, then felt he should define it for me. “People with unusual talents."

  I made a wry grimace.

  "I hope such word doesn't filter through to Management,” I said ruefully. “I've got enough troubles already."

  "You should be proud of it,” Number Four, the wiry little guy, spoke up. “Unusual achievements require unusual people!” Somehow I could picture a framed motto of those words hanging on his study wall. If so, it would be a cultural step forward from Kipling's “If."